Startup

I often wonder what will be the next trillion dollar markets. I think space exploration will be a trillion dollar market, I think chat bots could be a trillion dollar market as well. I also think the medical space has some interesting technologies coming on the horizon such as nanobots and self healing tech. Lastly, […]

Technical Specifications Revolutionary gaming features merge with a sleek design to make OTON X the best choice for next generation consoles! EnGeniux promises to soon become a household name with OTON X, one of the most riveting new game consoles to be announced in recent years. Encased in a sturdy black frame is a quad-core […]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Anniston, AL – August 16, 2016 – Startup technology gaming company EnGeniux announced that it will push forward with the OTON X Kickstarter campaign on August 22, 2016. With the OTON X core code completed, EnGeniux does not need to raise a large sum of money to bring the unit to market […]

The evolution of gaming in the cloud continue with the new LG and Gamefly deal to bring games to all LG smart TV’s. Today LG Electronics USA announced the addition of GameFly – the leading console game subscription service – to LG’s webOS-enabled Smart TVs. The GameFly Streaming App will launch in late April and […]

It seem that Mozilla is bringing its smartphone Firefox OS experiment to an end today with breaking news that the web browsing platform will cease development on it’s smartphone OS after the release of the version 2.6 of the operating system. This news will most definitely signal the end of the Firefox OS by the […]

You’ve seen them on Instagram, Twitter, and even on news sites: those impossible photos and videos, which used to be the privilege of professionals, showing amateur athletes perfecting their skills. Sometimes they show incredible stunts, other times incredible stupidity, but they all share one common trait – they were taken from an angle that simply […]

Every year, the Consumer Electronics Show brings us the coolest new gadgets, the must-haves, and the almost-theres. It’s one of the most exciting times for developers and buyers alike, and everyone has their favorites. We’ve detailed what we thought was the coolest gear to come out of this year’s show: Laptops Most gamers, geeks and […]

This week, the technology world will be swept by announcement after announcement at the Consumer Electronic Show, which has historically been the place that everyone from giants (Apple, Sony, Mercedes and Samsung) to startups (Pono Player) to showcase what’s new. As over 177,000 professionals throughout the technology industry make the annual migration to Las Vegas, […]

One of the most notable changes in how entrepreneurial ventures are funded has been the growth in popularity of crowdfunding. Instead of having to face the daunting task of asking for thousands of dollars from a handful of venture capitalists – requiring months of pitch preparation, a major deterrent to first time, introverted entrepreneurs – […]

A major security issue hit Valve’s Steam platform that allowed other people to access other Steam player accounts. As per the reports, when players logged into their accounts on the Steam website, people had immediate access to someone else’s information such as email, credit card details and account purchases. Valve issued a stated via Gamestop: […]

Categories

Preorder Here!

Top Stories:

Back in 2016 a startup called SearchInk, launched out of Berlin with the aim of combining machine learning with handwriting recognition. The upshot would be the ability to semantically label handwritten documents. Pretty nifty. It went on to raise €4.2 million in seed funding, but after developing this AI to read hard-written documents, it went in search of a market and business model. Not an easy thing to do. After all, what industry needs hand-written documents read at scale, when so many documents today are born digital in the first place? It turns out there was one after-all: the insurance industry.
In that sector, claims forms, emails and invoices are currently processed manually. But CEO and co-founder Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss realised that her company’s technology could significantly reduce the time and cost spent on administrative tasks, as well as the risk of human error.
So today, SearchInk rebrands as omni:us, a next generation AI service with two main products aimed squarely at the insurance industry: omni:us Claim and omni:us Policy. The idea is to be able to process digital documents, some of which contain handwriting, by classifying them and extracting the valuable data.
Omni:us is launching these products first in the DACH region, and claims to be working with over half of the top 10 insurance providers. It also says it can deploy its claims management and policy extraction products into an organisation within a matter of weeks. It’s now raise a total of $6.5 million from individual angels and VC, including Anthemis.
Quidenus-Wahlforss said: “Industry predictions show that insurance data will grow by 94% in 2018, 84% of which will be in highly variable documentation. However, in the future, there is also huge potential to apply omni:us technology to many other diverse industries such as finance, manufacturing, transportation and healthcare.”
She added that “We see customers improving their claims turn around time by 80% and all of that at 75% of the original costs. Why is this the case? Fundamentally, because with omni:us manual interventions can be reduced to a minimum, due to the supervised machine learning approach. One of our clients could speed up the comparison by an average 90% at only 80% of the costs.”
Furthermore, the AI could analyze policies with an annual value of only 250 Euro, which normally be a waste of a human being’s time and effort.
Omni:us is now in the process of raising a further funding round this year, opening an office in the US and growing its team.
... Read More

VentureFriends, the Athens-based VC that has backed the likes of Homie and Weengs, is announcing its new fund, with a first closing of €45 million.
‘VentureFriends II’ sees the VC firm pick up where its original €20 million fund left off, with a remit to do seed investments in Greek startups and beyond that have global ambitions.
Specifically, the VC fund, which counts LPs as the European Investment Fund, the Greek ESIF FoF, Equifund and several individuals and family offices, is on the look out for seed-stage tech startups in its sweet spot of e-marketplaces, e-commerce, and SaaS.
I’m told it plans to write a company’s first cheque of up to €1 million. There’s also the option to add another €5 million to the fund, with a final closing target of €50 million, although this may not come to fruition.
Notably, VentureFriends’ second fund has already disclosed a first investment, participating in Stasher’s recent funding round. The startup (formerly known as CityStasher) is billed as an ‘Airbnb for luggage’ and offers a network of brick and mortar businesses across Europe that will store your luggage for a few hours in between commutes.
Meanwhile, the two year-old ‘VentureFriends I’ made 21 investments during its lifetime, which feels like a pretty rapid deployment of capital. These have mostly been in Greece-based startups with an international outlook, including Blueground, a company offering high-quality mid-term accommodation for business executives ad expats. The company manages over 700 properties in New York, Dubai, Athens and Istanbul.
Another example cited by VentureFriends is Welcomepickups, which two years into existence is now present in 20 cities in Europe and Asia. The startup can be thought of as a travel concierge, spanning transfer services, essential products, pre-ordered tickets to top attractions, tips and tailor-made experiences led by locals.
The two Partners of VentureFriends are Apostolos Apostolakis and George Dimopoulos. Apostolakis previously co-founded e-shop.gr, the first e-tailer in Greece, and in 2011 he co-founded e-food, a food delivery marketplace acquired in 2015 by Delivery Hero, providing a major exit for the Greek startup ecosystem. He and Dimopoulos were also among the first angel investors in Taxibeat, the taxi app that sold to Daimler in February 2017.
... Read More

Back in 2016 a startup called SearchInk, launched out of Berlin with the aim of combining machine learning with handwriting recognition. The upshot would be the ability to semantically label handwritten documents. Pretty nifty. It went on to raise €4.2 million in seed funding, but after developing this AI to read hard-written documents, it went in search of a market and business model. Not an easy thing to do. After all, what industry needs hand-written documents read at scale, when so many documents today are born digital in the first place? It turns out there was one after-all: the insurance industry.
In that sector, claims forms, emails and invoices are currently processed manually. But CEO and co-founder Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss realised that her company’s technology could significantly reduce the time and cost spent on administrative tasks, as well as the risk of human error.
So today, SearchInk rebrands as omni:us, a next generation AI service with two main products aimed squarely at the insurance industry: omni:us Claim and omni:us Policy. The idea is to be able to process digital documents, some of which contain handwriting, by classifying them and extracting the valuable data.
Omni:us is launching these products first in the DACH region, and claims to be working with over half of the top 10 insurance providers. It also says it can deploy its claims management and policy extraction products into an organisation within a matter of weeks. It’s now raise a total of $6.5 million from individual angels and VC, including Anthemis.
Quidenus-Wahlforss said: “Industry predictions show that insurance data will grow by 94% in 2018, 84% of which will be in highly variable documentation. However, in the future, there is also huge potential to apply omni:us technology to many other diverse industries such as finance, manufacturing, transportation and healthcare.”
She added that “We see customers improving their claims turn around time by 80% and all of that at 75% of the original costs. Why is this the case? Fundamentally, because with omni:us manual interventions can be reduced to a minimum, due to the supervised machine learning approach. One of our clients could speed up the comparison by an average 90% at only 80% of the costs.”
Furthermore, the AI could analyze policies with an annual value of only 250 Euro, which normally be a waste of a human being’s time and effort.
Omni:us is now in the process of raising a further funding round this year, opening an office in the US and growing its team.
... Read More

VentureFriends, the Athens-based VC that has backed the likes of Homie and Weengs, is announcing its new fund, with a first closing of €45 million.
‘VentureFriends II’ sees the VC firm pick up where its original €20 million fund left off, with a remit to do seed investments in Greek startups and beyond that have global ambitions.
Specifically, the VC fund, which counts LPs as the European Investment Fund, the Greek ESIF FoF, Equifund and several individuals and family offices, is on the look out for seed-stage tech startups in its sweet spot of e-marketplaces, e-commerce, and SaaS.
I’m told it plans to write a company’s first cheque of up to €1 million. There’s also the option to add another €5 million to the fund, with a final closing target of €50 million, although this may not come to fruition.
Notably, VentureFriends’ second fund has already disclosed a first investment, participating in Stasher’s recent funding round. The startup (formerly known as CityStasher) is billed as an ‘Airbnb for luggage’ and offers a network of brick and mortar businesses across Europe that will store your luggage for a few hours in between commutes.
Meanwhile, the two year-old ‘VentureFriends I’ made 21 investments during its lifetime, which feels like a pretty rapid deployment of capital. These have mostly been in Greece-based startups with an international outlook, including Blueground, a company offering high-quality mid-term accommodation for business executives ad expats. The company manages over 700 properties in New York, Dubai, Athens and Istanbul.
Another example cited by VentureFriends is Welcomepickups, which two years into existence is now present in 20 cities in Europe and Asia. The startup can be thought of as a travel concierge, spanning transfer services, essential products, pre-ordered tickets to top attractions, tips and tailor-made experiences led by locals.
The two Partners of VentureFriends are Apostolos Apostolakis and George Dimopoulos. Apostolakis previously co-founded e-shop.gr, the first e-tailer in Greece, and in 2011 he co-founded e-food, a food delivery marketplace acquired in 2015 by Delivery Hero, providing a major exit for the Greek startup ecosystem. He and Dimopoulos were also among the first angel investors in Taxibeat, the taxi app that sold to Daimler in February 2017.
... Read More

<p>Back in 2016 a startup called SearchInk, launched out of Berlin with the aim of combining machine learning with handwriting recognition. The upshot would be the ability to semantically label handwritten documents. Pretty nifty. It went on to raise €4.2 million in seed funding, but after developing this AI to read hard-written documents, it went in search of a market and business model. Not an easy thing to do. After all, what industry needs hand-written documents read at scale, when so many documents today are born digital in the first place? It turns out there was one after-all: the insurance industry.</p>
<p>In that sector, claims forms, emails and invoices are currently processed manually. But CEO and co-founder Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss realised that her company’s technology could significantly reduce the time and cost spent on administrative tasks, as well as the risk of human error.</p>
<p>So today, SearchInk rebrands as <a href="https://omnius.com/">omni:us</a>, a next generation AI service with two main products aimed squarely at the insurance industry: <a class="crunchbase-link" href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/omni/" target="_blank">omni:us <span class="crunchbase-tooltip-indicator"></span></a> Claim and omni:us Policy. The idea is to be able to process digital documents, some of which contain handwriting, by classifying them and extracting the valuable data.</p>
<p>Omni:us is launching these products first in the DACH region, and claims to be working with over half of the top 10 insurance providers. It also says it can deploy its claims management and policy extraction products into an organisation within a matter of weeks. It’s now raise a total of $6.5 million from individual angels and VC, including Anthemis.</p>
<p>Quidenus-Wahlforss said: “Industry predictions show that insurance data will grow by 94% in 2018, 84% of which will be in highly variable documentation. However, in the future, there is also huge potential to apply omni:us technology to many other diverse industries such as finance, manufacturing, transportation and healthcare.”</p>
<p>She added that “We see customers improving their claims turn around time by 80% and all of that at 75% of the original costs. Why is this the case? Fundamentally, because with omni:us manual interventions can be reduced to a minimum, due to the supervised machine learning approach. One of our clients could speed up the comparison by an average 90% at only 80% of the costs.”</p>
<p>Furthermore, the AI could analyze policies with an annual value of only 250 Euro, which normally be a waste of a human being’s time and effort.</p>
<p>Omni:us is now in the process of raising a further funding round this year, opening an office in the US and growing its team.</p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:2mJPEYqXBVI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=2mJPEYqXBVI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:-BTjWOF_DHI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?i=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:-BTjWOF_DHI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?i=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~4/LMM9Mpjs28M" height="1" width="1" alt="" />... Read More

<p><a href="http://www.venturefriends.vc/">VentureFriends</a>, the Athens-based VC that has backed the likes of <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/20/homie/">Homie</a> and <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/23/weengs/">Weengs</a>, is announcing its new fund, with a first closing of €45 million.</p>
<p>‘<a class="crunchbase-link" href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/venturefriends/" target="_blank">VentureFriends <span class="crunchbase-tooltip-indicator"></span></a> II’ sees the VC firm pick up where its <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/03/venturefriends/">original €20 million fund</a> left off, with a remit to do seed investments in <a href="http://tech.eu/features/18161/athens-greece-startup-ecosystem-report/">Greek startups and beyond</a> that have global ambitions.</p>
<p>Specifically, the VC fund, which counts LPs as the European Investment Fund, the Greek ESIF FoF, Equifund and several individuals and family offices, is on the look out for seed-stage tech startups in its sweet spot of e-marketplaces, e-commerce, and SaaS.</p>
<p>I’m told it plans to write a company’s first cheque of up to €1 million. There’s also the option to add another €5 million to the fund, with a final closing target of €50 million, although this may not come to fruition.</p>
<p>Notably, VentureFriends’ second fund has already disclosed a first investment, participating in Stasher’s recent funding round. The startup (<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/09/citystasher/">formerly known as CityStasher</a>) is billed as an ‘Airbnb for luggage’ and offers a network of brick and mortar businesses across Europe that will store your luggage for a few hours in between commutes.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the two year-old ‘VentureFriends I’ made 21 investments during its lifetime, which feels like a pretty rapid deployment of capital. These have mostly been in Greece-based startups with an international outlook, including Blueground, a company offering high-quality mid-term accommodation for business executives ad expats. The company manages over 700 properties in New York, Dubai, Athens and Istanbul.</p>
<p>Another example cited by VentureFriends is Welcomepickups, which two years into existence is now present in 20 cities in Europe and Asia. The startup can be thought of as a travel concierge, spanning transfer services, essential products, pre-ordered tickets to top attractions, tips and tailor-made experiences led by locals.</p>
<p>The two Partners of VentureFriends are Apostolos Apostolakis and George Dimopoulos. Apostolakis previously co-founded e-shop.gr, the first e-tailer in Greece, and in 2011 he co-founded e-food, a food delivery marketplace acquired in 2015 by Delivery Hero, providing a major exit for the Greek startup ecosystem. He and Dimopoulos were also among the first angel investors in Taxibeat, the taxi app that <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/27/daimler-close-to-buying-taxibeat-in-greece-for-around-43m/">sold to Daimler in February 2017</a>.</p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:2mJPEYqXBVI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=2mJPEYqXBVI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:-BTjWOF_DHI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?i=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:-BTjWOF_DHI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?i=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~4/01B29ewfaDk" height="1" width="1" alt="" />... Read More